Friday, January 25, 2002

Crime wave

Shortly after I finished my breakfast, and while the rest of the
household slumbered, I answered the door to find two Maui detectives.
I made a quick mental search but, disappointingly, couldn't think of
anything I have been up to recently that has been illegal -- so I set
about casually answering their questions. It helped put me at ease that
they were dressed in aloha shirts, and the female doing the questioning
seemed much less than intimidating -- I would have taken her for a rather
dour avon lady were it not for the badge and cuffs hanging from her belt.
They were most interested in our new downstairs neighbors, a family of
five that moved in a few weeks ago. The cops were following down a lead,
and trying to narrow in on their quarry. They had descriptions of my
neighbors and their car, but the car description didn't match. This was
serious. Damn, the neighbors seemed innocuous enough -- meth lab?
arsonists? car thieves? Nothing seemed to fit. I had to inquire what
they were after...

Stolen rooster.

I am not kidding. This female cop was looking for cock. Ahh, Maui, I
almost miss having real crime around. No, not really, but this seemed
kind of silly. But they were dead serious. They had been tracking the
theft of a rooster from up the hill in Makawao, and somehow my neighbors
had been implicated. I tried to digest this information without laughing.
I asked if this rooster was particularly valuable, "A prize fighting cock
maybe?" (maybe they were really running a cock fighting sting...) Nope. "Good
roosters are worth hundreds of dollars." I told them I had been home a lot and
hadn't seen or heard a rooster (they're, umm, hard to conceal -- especially
mornings). I thought for certain they were after something else, but their
story held up and they really were on this case. I wished them luck, and
off they went.